


A Haze in the Head

by StormsBreadth



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Other, Sickfic, martian flu, moderately graphic descriptions of illness, sickness is a thing that happens to people who aren't Peter Nureyev, unabashed fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 09:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16910082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormsBreadth/pseuds/StormsBreadth
Summary: Peter Nureyev is lightheaded, weak of limb and feels like death, and the obvious explanation is poison. Juno is less sympathetic than Peter feels he is due.(it's fluffy sickfic what more is there to say. full symptoms listed in authors' notes)





	A Haze in the Head

**Author's Note:**

> The Penumbra minibang discord fic enabling machine strikes again with thank u to aroclint for telling me to write Peter getting sick. Though admittedly it struck about a month ago and then I got distracted. 
> 
> Contains discussion of poison, including one character thinking he's been poisoned, and in-depth descriptions of flu symptoms including lightheadedness, temporary lack of vision, sore throat, exhaustion, coughing, sneezing and runny noses.

Peter was lightheaded and shaking by the time he made it to Juno’s apartment, both from the leftover adrenaline and from the synthwind that, despite being generated by electric pumps on the edge of the Hyperion City dome, cut through his shirt with a freezing bite. The rain had been a drizzle when he left the Starling mansion in the fancier districts: somewhere between there and the shitty apartment block Juno called home it had turned into a downpour.

Didn’t help that the manner of his exit had necessitated leaving his coat behind. It wasn’t one of his favourites, but the loss was still annoying. Not least because it had left him without any protection from the weather that Martians insisted on creating, and left him shivering at the bottom of Juno’s fire escape. He could have sworn that it was shorter last time he was here: looking at now it made him feel vertiginous, and he had to lean on the alley wall for support before even thinking about scaling it properly.

The job should have been simple. In and out, no fuss needed. He’d schmoozed he way in the front door and then slipped away from the party and into the less public areas of the building. The Starlings were the smug kind of rich: Satyashraya Starling kept his priceless artifact earrings in a box by his bed, practically asking for them to be stolen.

Satyashraya also had much the same taste in jewellery as Juno. It had been hard for Peter to resist the urge to pilfer something pretty for his lady, even knowing that Juno would never accept stolen goods.

But it had all been going fine. Peter had memorised the guard patterns, slipping into the shadows whenever the Starlings’ hired muscle swept past. It was the sort of thing that should have worked fine, and had worked fine a hundred times before, but just as Peter was reaching the exit his body had betrayed him and decided that then, right then, was exactly when he needed to have a sneezing fit.

Rich as they were, you’d think that the Starlings would be able to afford a cleaner to dust the damn place.

Sniffing rather resentfully, Peter looked up at the sky and tried to gather the strength to make his way up. His brain was working far slower than usual, refusing to remain focused on the task at hand and fading into fuzz. The faint light of Hyperion dome shone up above, a thin sliver of the sky still visible between the alley walls, crackling lines of electricity seeming to glow between the clouds of vapour that condensed at the top. It never just rained in Hyperion: the technology that regulated the climate turned every shower into a thunderstorm.

He tried shaking his head, partly to clear the rain from his face and partly to make himself focus, but all that did was make his head hurt and increase the dizziness to an extent where he had to sit down on the alley floor. The puddle he found himself in started to seep unpleasantly through his trousers as he tried to gather his thoughts.

As these things went, he wasn't even that beaten up. Covered in blood, yes, but it mostly wasn't his. The scuffle that had broken out after his discovery had been brief. Peter was quick with a knife, and the worst injuries he’d taken himself had been a couple of scrapes and bruises and a near miss with a blaster. He’d not been hit in the head, none of his cuts were near major arteries, nothing that should merit this level of out of it.

Unless he’d been poisoned.

The thought flashed through his head like the lightning flashed through the clouds above, sending a jolt to the base of his neck and making him sit upright suddenly. Poison would explain a lot: the heaviness in his limbs, the difficulty focusing, the headache that had sprung into existence when he shook his head and was now settling down the sides of his skull and at the bridge of his nose.

He struggled to his feet, adrenaline from the realisation countering the desperate urge to never move again. If he had been poisoned, he wanted to see Juno before he died.

Standing up meant his vision went black for a second but he gritted his teeth against it, reach blindly for the railing. Even if it was generally more efficient to vault up the sides of the fire escape, in his current state that felt like an unnecessary risk, so the stairs it was.

As he reached the top of the first flight, his grip on the railing faltered and his feet gave out from under him, skidding across the rain-slick surface and then off into open air. He only just managed to remain on the staircase, acquiring a scrape to the side of his face and a clang to the side of his head that seemed to reverberate around his skull. He paused a moment to thank himself for taking the stairs, aware that the result could have been far, far worse, and hauled himself up again.

By the time he reached the top of the stairs he was trembling again, the rain on his face mingling with a thin sheen of sweat. The cold had stopped bothering him: now he was warm, too warm, and weak once more. It was all he could manage to knock a couple of times on Juno's window, before slumping down on the platform and dropping his head forward.

The window opened and he forced his head up again. Juno was leaning out, the faltering light of his kitchen framing him from behind. Peter’s eye were watering again, causing the light to blur and expand outwards, and in that hazy state he looked like an angel.

If all angels looked like Juno Steel, maybe dying wouldn't be so bad an option.

'What, dying?'

It took several moments for Peter to realise that he’d spoken aloud, by which point Juno had scrambled out of the window and wrapped an arm around Peter’s side. Peter leant into him, appreciating the solidity of Juno’s body against his side. Juno appeared to be attempting to get him to do something, but Peter’s mind was operating in the same manner as the metaphorical cosmos:  occasional points of light with impossibly long gaps of void in between.

'Dammit, Nureyev, it would help if you would do something other than clinging to me like a bedraggled Phoebian limpet.'

‘I’ve been poisoned, Juno,’ Peter said as Juno wrestled him back through the fire escape, aware of the note of petulance that had entered his voice but too shattered to do anything out of it. ‘You should give a man comfort in his final hours on Mars.’

He tried to keep holding Juno as he dumped him unceremoniously on the living room couch, but his limbs failed him and dropped weakly to his sides instead. Juno looked, if anything, unimpressed, now standing between Peter and the window he didn’t close behind them. As if on cue, a gust of wind blew through the open window and set Peter off into a violent bout of shivering. Black spots started to bloom at the edge of his vision and he sneezed three times in quick succession. The pain at the sides of his head flared in response, and by the time he flopped back against the sofa cushions his vision had completely blacked out.

The next thing he was aware of was pressure at his sides, and the feeling of being lifted. His vision came back slowly to reveal Juno’s neck, and beyond that a moving portion of floor, since Juno had apparently just scooped him up from the couch again. Peter tried to crane his head to look at Juno’s face, but that made head head hurt more, so he settled for resting against his shoulder instead.

When Juno dropped him on the bed in the darkened bedroom it felt heavenly. He flopped over, trying to summon up the energy to care about the fact that he was probably in the process of dying but feeling, for the most part, more interested in the opportunity for sleep. It took him several moments to process that Juno had asked him take his shirt off, several more to put that request into action, and by that point Juno was already half kneeling awkwardly on the bed, in the process of removing it for him.

‘Well Juno, I can’t say that I object to the concept of spending my last night in your arms but really, I don’t think I’m going to be up for anything too strenuous, whatever this is, it’s already taking effect.’

Juno just stared at him for a few seconds, the third button on Peter’s shirt still in between his fingers, fully dressed himself. ‘Let’s get one thing straight here Nureyev,’ he said, gaze hardening slightly. ‘We are not getting up to any strenuous activity when all you’re capable of doing is draining my body heat and sneezing all over the place. The only thing you’re doing now is getting some damn sleep, once I’ve got your _soaking wet_ shirt off so you stand a chance of not freezing to death in the night.’

Peter stared at him for a few seconds, blinking stupidly like while his brain failed to come up with any kind of witty response. Or any response: thinking felt hard, the individual ideas that usually came together into sharp turns of phrase remaining fragmented and hard to get hold of. Juno took the opportunity to pull Peter’s shirt and trousers off and shove him under the blankets. Peter tried to do something - resist or help, he wasn’t quite sure - but his limbs were still refusing to work. Juno kissed him gently on the forehead.

'You're not dying, Peter,' he said, the sound of Peter's first name falling gentle from Juno’s tongue and lighting up one of the few functioning receptors in Peter’s brain. 'You've got the flu.'

Peter stared at him. He blinked. In the back of his mind, he gathered the little remaining focus he had to run slowly through a list of symptoms. Shivering could be symptomatic of a fever. Sneezing was obvious. Weakness of limbs, lightness of head. He tried to remember the last time he’d had the flu. He’d been a kid at the time, barely aware of what was happening, so most of what he remembered about the experience was blankets, and shivering, but he’d faked the flu for a case not long ago, and that had involved extensive research to emulate it properly. That hadn’t felt like this, but the symptoms matched up to what he’d been trying to display.

‘Oh,’ was the last thing he said before blacking out.

 

~0~

 

When he woke again, it was to the hazy neon glow of Hyperion’s lights shining through the slats of the blinds and onto the bed. His head throbbed dully and his eyes ached, and snot was already pooling at the bottom of his nose, ready to drip onto the sheets of Juno’s bed.

Juno’s empty bed. The bed without Juno in it.

Fear gripped Peter’s heart and he sat up fast enough that his head spun and his vision faded out again for a few seconds. The sudden movement was also enough to send a wave of watery snot dripping down the inside of his nose and onto his upper lip. He held a hand up to his face to stop it from getting all over the sheets and tried to calm down. There had to be a rational explanation: there surely was a rational explanation, Juno wouldn't have just left him here in his own apartment to abandon him. That was. Ridiculous thinking.

And at this point less of an emergency than getting to the bathroom to find some paper. Juno was not the sort of lady to keep handkerchiefs in convenient locations, and Peter couldn't remember what had happened to his own clothing, so toilet paper it was. He stumbled out of bed, not bothering to flail around for the light switch: the faint light from outside and his own muscle memory were enough to get him to the bathroom.

Or they should have been. What he actually wound up doing was tripping over his own feet on the way there, crashing into a wall then falling back straight down onto his ass. Half a shelf’s worth of books and trinkets came down with him, adding insult to injury as the battered paperback hit him on the forehead and chest.

The light flicked on. Peter blinked in the sudden brightness and looked over to the couch. Juno was sitting on it, covered in blankets and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

‘Nureyev? What’re you doing?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Peter replied, trying to recover some shreds of dignity from his position on the floor. ‘I was going to the bathroom.’

‘Sure, that explains why you’re sat by the door to the kitchen.’

Peter looked up. He was indeed sat by the kitchen. The bathroom door hung open on the other side of the room, a tantalising glimpse of white tiles visible through the crack. He struggled to his feet, sniffing. The dignity thing was probably a lost cause here, but he was still going to make an attempt.

‘Well, it was dark. We all make mistakes sometimes and that’s besides the point. Why are you on the sofa?’

Juno frowned, folding his arms and hunching in a little. ‘Didn’t want to disturb you. You look like shit and it felt like you might be able to make use out of the whole of the bed.’

Peter stumbled over to him, feet still not working quite right. As Peter predicted, Juno got up, disentangling himself rapidly enough to catch Peter before he fell. Peter snuggled up against him, suddenly aware of the coldness of the room in contrast to the warmth of Juno’s body.

Disturb me? On the contrary my love, I should sleep far better with a Juno shaped hot water bottle next to me.’

Juno laughed, in a way that was half amused, half annoyed, and made to hook his arms under Peter’s legs, before Peter stopped him with a flutter of his hand against Juno’s shoulder.

‘Ah, but my love,’ he said. ‘I do need to blow my nose.’

 

~0~

 

The next time Peter woke up, he was cold again and not delighted to discover that there had been a new development on the sickness front. His throat was raw and aching, as though he’d swallowed the diamonds he stole rather than pocketing them. No, that wasn’t quite right - he’d swallowed jewels before to hide them, and while not exactly pleasant that hadn’t been as bad as this.

He coughed once in an attempt to soothe the ache, but the one cough turned into a fit that he couldn’t quiet for a good minute. At some point the noise must have woken Juno, as Peter found himself wrapped in Juno’s arms, his hands rubbing soothing circles down Peter’s back until the coughing settled.

Peter collapsed back as Juno let go of him, drawing in laboured breaths that caught in his throat and threatened a resurgence of the coughing. There was a shift in the bed as Juno disappeared, only to come back with a glass of water. Peter drank obligingly: the water was lukewarm, but washed away the pain in his throat for a few blissful seconds.

‘You doing ok there?’ his detective asked, eyes glimmering with the light from the window.  Peter nodded, not trusting his throat to make sounds that weren’t coughing. Now that he was able to breathe again, the exhaustion was catching up with him, so when Juno pulled him close he snuggled up to his partner, burying his face in Juno’s neck and breathing him in, appreciating the ability to smell while it lasted. He was covered in sweat, he knew, despite being frozen, but Juno didn’t seem to mind, holding him close until he fell asleep again.

 

~0~

 

The third time Peter woke up, it was to the warm red light of a martian afternoon. The bed was empty again, but he could hear the sounds of movement from outside the bedroom door. Pausing only to cough up what felt like his entire lung into the roll of toilet paper that Juno had helpfully left by the bed, he bundled himself up in the duvet and made his way out of the dimly lit bedroom.

Juno was sat at the table, frowning down at a pile of documents. He had evidently been out: there was a shopping bag on the table next to him, and his shoes were kicked off just next to where he sat. Something about the scene made Peter’s heart contract a little: even in such a mundane, commonplace situation, he was stunning.

‘You’re still alive.’

‘Only just,’ Peter responded, sinking back down onto the sofa, still wrapped up in the blankets. Juno snorted, but reached over to the shopping bag.

'I went and got you some cough sweets,' he said. 'And soup. Don't thank me for that though, I called Rita to tell her I wasn't going to be in the office today and she shouted at me until I said I'd make sure you had canned soup.'

'How thoughtful of her. Pass on my thanks. And the cough sweets, if you would?'

Juno chucked them over to him, a slow throw that he should absolutely have been able to catch. Unfortunately, what he actually did was stare blankly at Juno as the box sailed past him, and then broke out into another fit of coughing. He heard Juno mutter 'shit', and the sounds of water running, and then Juno was back with another glass of water, and the cough sweets open and in his hand. Peter accepted both gratefully, along with the fact that Juno was sitting next to him. He snuggled up to his lady, ignoring his protestations. They died down quickly enough.

'You know, I do have things to do today.'

'But right now you need to keep me company, because I'm -' he paused, considering the fact that he was about to admit to this. 'Sick.' It wasn't something he'd been inclined to admit in the past. Admitting sickness generally meant admitting weakness. Here it meant that Juno made some absent grumbling noises, but put an arm around him, pulling him close. Peter snuggled up, smiling absently.

He drifted in and out of consciousness for the rest of the day. At some point, Juno put on a stream of some kind; Peter would guess on Rita's suggestion. Whoever the responsible party, he congratulated them on their taste: it was the exact level of mindless nonsense that his half asleep mind could comprehend, without actually keeping him up. Juno wasn't next to him all the time, but whether by intent or by chance, whenever he opened his eyes he was in sight: whether at the table, or in the kitchen, or sitting next to him.

By the evening, most of the fog had cleared from his head. His nose was more or less entirely blocked and his throat still felt like he was swallowing razor blades, but he could think, and more or less talk, and sit up long enough to eat some painfully spicy soup that made snot run down his face like tears, but also allowed him to breathe for the first time in a day, while Juno laughed at him.

They stumbled into bed, probably the earliest night that either of them had had in the past year. Or decade. Peter was out like a light, sprawled half on top of Juno and half in the lady’s arms, mouth open and aware he was probably drooling on him, but comfortable enough to know that it didn’t matter.

 

~0~

 

When he woke up the next morning, it was to the sound of coughing. Not his own, though there was still a familiar tickle in the back of his throat, but Juno, rolled over to the side and trying to suppress the noise. When he finally rolled over, he must have seen Peter’s shit eating grin.

‘Not a fucking word, Nureyev.’

**Author's Note:**

> I'm currently on tumblr as [stormsbreadth](http://stormsbreadth.tumblr.com) if you want to say hi


End file.
